Damien Hirst's Spot Paintings as Modern 'Pompier' Art

Damien Hirst's Complete Spot Paintings 1986-2011 exhibition across eleven Gagosian galleries in eight cities, featuring 1,500 catalogue numbers, is analyzed as a contemporary incarnation of 'pompier' art—a 19th-century French term for academic painters favoring spectacle and bombast. The series, with only five paintings actually executed by Hirst himself, involves 150 lenders from twenty countries. Hirst's work, including the diamond-encrusted skull 'For the Love of God' (2007), shares with pompier painters a penchant for grand themes (God, life, death), flashy materials, and allegorical titles. The Spot Paintings, named after molecules, explore infinity and accumulation, inspired partly by Hirst's childhood memory of breaking into a deceased neighbor's collection. Hirst announced in 1996 that the series would have a definitive end, adding a theatrical dimension. The comparison to pompier art, originally coined at the École des Beaux-Arts to mock David's warriors' shiny helmets, highlights Hirst's decadent, media-savvy excess.